2.3. Setting Preferences

GnuCash allows you to customize your session by setting several preference options. From the menu select Edit -> Preferences, then make your desired changes using the list of items shown on the left. Once you have finished making your preference changes, select Apply or OK to apply the changes to your session. (Selecting Apply applies the changes while leaving the Preferences window still open. Selecting OK applies the changes and closes the Preferences window.) At any time, you can click on the Default button to return the options to the default preference setting.

In this section, we will discuss some of the items that relate to setting up your session and using files: Accounts, Business, General and Online Banking & Importing. The International item relates to currencies and is discussed in Chapter 9. The Reconcile, Register, Register Colors, Scheduled Transactions and Transaction Matcher items relate to transactions and account registers, and they are discussed in Chapter 4.

The Accounts item lets you set the following options:

The Business item lets you set the following options:

In General, you will see the default settings shown here:

The Preferences dialog

This image shows the GnuCash Preferences dialog where the options of how GnuCash looks and acts are setup.

The Online Banking & Importing item contains only one option, QIF Verbose Documentation. The first time you use the importer (discussed later in this chapter), you may notice that the importer has detailed instructions on how to import a file. Once you have become familiar with using the importer, you might want to turn off this option. Turning off the option gives you less detail in the importer dialogs.